Kayaker to paddle across U.S. to create rec program for vets

11:32 PM,
May 26, 2013

Cold Spring kayaker Will Hembree will is expected to arrive in Oklahoma in mid-August after a kayaking journey that began at Dock Side Park in Cold Spring. The kayak in the photograph is a Journey 14 donated by Jackson Kayaks for the this adventure, which Hembree has dubbed ReDiscovering America. Alan Weiss

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He has ridden a bicycle halfway around the Mediterranean Sea, trekked the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, an 800-kilometer pilgrimage through France's Pyrenees Mountains to northwestern Spain, and hiked the Appian Way, or Via Appia, the ancient road that connected Rome to southern Italy.

But Hembree, 31, has now embarked on perhaps the most epic expedition of his life: kayaking from the shores of Cold Spring to Twin Bridges State Park, Okla. Hembree, who has lived in Cold Spring for three years, grew up on the border of Oklahoma in Neosho, Mo., ...